Evolution is the fundamental organizing principle of biology and phylogeny is the fundamental framework for understanding evolutionary history. Reconstructing the Tree of Life has been a goal of biologists since Darwin first included his conception of a phylogenetic tree as the sole figure in On the Origin of Species. However, the recognized importance of accurately reconstructing evolutionary history now extends far beyond the confines of evolutionary biology. Historical evolutionary inference has become an integral component of research in molecular biology, genomics, medicine, conservation, agriculture, epidemiology, and even forensics.

Our lab evaluates, creates, and applies phylogenetic methods to some of today's most pressing questions.

Dr. Guifang Zhou, a mathematician most recently at Florida State University, will be joining the Brown Phyleaux Lab in August 2015 as a postdoctoral researcher. Dr. Zhou, along with her Ph.D. advisor Dr. Kyle Gallivan and other graduate students at FSU, has been collaborating with the Brown Lab for several years on a project to leverage network-based mathematical methods for understanding the information in large sets of phylogenetic trees.

Dr. Lyndon Coghill recently agreed to join the Brown Phyleaux Lab in August 2015 as a postdoctoral researcher. Dr. Coghill will be working on an NSF-funded project (DEB-1355071) to develop tools for assessing the fit between models and data in phylogenetics.

Two postdoctoral researcher positions are available in the computational evolutionary biology lab of Jeremy M. Brown at Louisiana State University. Research in the Brown lab is broadly centered on the use of phylogenetic approaches to understand organismal history and molecular evolution.

The first talk of 2015 in the CompBio Seminar Series for Undergrads will be given by LSU math alum Dr. Stephanie Hicks on Wed., Feb. 11th from 5-6 in LSA A101. The title of her talk will be: “Why Statistics Matters in the Analysis of Genomics Data”. A social with food and drinks provided will follow in the LSA Atrium from 6-6:30.

The Phyleaux Lab has a new paper available via Advance Access in Systematic Biology. This paper was spearheaded by Brad Nelson and explores the use of existing information (contained in other sequence datasets) to set informed branch-length priors for Bayesian phylogenetic analyses. The approach seems promising for branch lengths and may be applicable to other parameters in phylogenetic models. If interested, you can find the paper here:

Jeremy is teaching a graduate-level course on Computational Phylogenetics during the spring 2015 semester. The course involves a lot of coding in Python and we're keeping all course material on GitHub. Feel free to follow along here: https://github.com/jembrown/CompPhylo_Spr2015.

Oh, and it's Mardi Gras season in Louisiana! Come visit for the king cake, parades, and a great time.

The Brown Phyleaux Lab has experienced quite a bit of turnover in the past few months. Several excellent and talented lab members have moved on to explore new frontiers. Chelsea Kliebert, an undergraduate researcher, graduated from LSU in May 2014 and is now pursuing a Ph.D. in the Chemical and Systems Biology graduate program at Stanford. Jeremy Ash, a research associate, started working in the lab in February 2014 and then began work on a Ph.D. in Bioinformatics at North Carolina State in August.

The lab of Jeremy M. Brown in the Dept. of Biological Sciences seeks a talented and motivated student (undergraduate or graduate) for a part-time, paid position focusing on science outreach and communication.